Dave Lieber 
THE WATCHDOG
How not to treat your customers
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
You don't really want a Watchdog intervention -- not if you are corporate America, and you have what you dare to call a customer relations department.
The definition of a Watchdog intervention? When your service is so bad that customers have to call in a newspaper columnist to rescue them. That's pretty bad.
Today's list of Watchdog interventions represents situations that companies should have handled correctly the first time. But they dragged on and on and on.
Can you hear me now?
Ralph and Sandra Weinbaum of Azle got stuck with a $90 electrician's bill that they thought Verizon should pay.
Verizon insisted that the phone problems were on the family's end, not Verizon's.
They were wrong. After the Weinbaums hired the electrician to check their phone jacks, they contacted Verizon with proof that the jacks were fine. Verizon was messing up. The family asked Verizon for $90.
The response? "It's aggravating to have a large company just ignore your communication," Ralph Weinbaum said.
The Texas Public Utility Commission wasn't interested either. But The Watchdog was.
After the intervention, Verizon's customer relations representatives told the Weinbaums that they would credit their account $123 -- $90 for the electrician and $25 for a service performance guarantee plus tax.
Suddenly, Weinbaum said, "They were very responsive."
Misquoted
Karen Walters of Fort Worth said she was quoted $90 for specific services from Charter Communications. But the first month's bill came in at $177. When she complained, she was told that the original numbers were wrong, and her bill was correct.
"I told them I was going to call the attorney general's office and report them for false advertising. Didn't seem to faze them."
Intervention time.
After that, Walters said, "They were extremely polite to me and very respectful. It is just a shame that the people who you speak to at first are not!"
The end result. She is paying $85 plus taxes and fees for cable, wireless Internet and telephone services.
Cleaning up Fort Worth
For months, Barbara York of Fort Worth endured the sight of bare branches in her yard and on the fence and hanging from trees and wires. They were left by a company that strung nearby cable.
Charter acknowledged the problem and assured her that someone would clean up. But nobody ever did.
"I am 80 years old, a widow, living on a small pension and cannot physically or financially take care of the problem."
We jumped in. A cleanup crew appeared.
"I had just about given up. It is such a relief to have this problem solved," she said.
If at first you don't succeed...
Bob Harvey with the Tarrant County Fire Alarm Center was so upset that DirecTV continued to charge $6 a month for a DVR machine that the department doesn't have that he decided to cancel the entire service. Then, DirecTV billed him for a $275 cancellation fee.
The first attempt made by The Watchdog landed a credit of the $6 monthly fees. Harvey wasn't happy. He fretted about the $275.
We swooped in again. Got the $275 knocked off, too.
DirecTV explained to me: "We corrected this. Sorry about the delay. We have a new person on our team who's still learning the ropes."
Try, try again
Terry and Eva Stack of Keller bought a 50-inch television from Best Buy with a four-year performance guarantee. Three years into it, the TV died. Their gamble paid off, or so they thought.
They contacted Best Buy, which tried to replace a part. But that didn't work. The Stacks were given a number to call, but they couldn't get anyone to take action. After they contacted The Watchdog, Best Buy gave the Stacks the red carpet treatment. The company invited them to exchange the old TV for a new one at any Best Buy store.
The Stacks were amazed. They picked out the new set and also watched the store clerks to learn how to exchange an online purchase to a store purchase, something headquarters had ordered them to do.
"All's well that ends well," the Stacks wrote in an e-mail.
DVD player is in the mail
Peter Wersal of Arlington got tired of waiting for the free portable DVD player he was promised if he signed up for service with DirecTV.
We did our little deal. Then the company said, "We have no record of having received his redemption form."
Well, he said he mailed it.
"That being said: We have manually added him to the list," the DirecTV spokesman said.
Number of days it took from Wersal's complaint to me to the day the DVD player arrived at his front door: 16.
I'm working on that. I know I can do this faster.
watchdog@star-telegram.com
